Top Lots: Old Master Through Modern Prints

The first sale in Swann’s very busy May 2013 schedule of auctions was Old Master Through Modern Prints on the first day of the month. George Bellows’s 1917 lithograph A Stag at Sharkey’s brought $168,000, making it a record for any print by the artist at auction and the top lot of the day. Works by Edward Hopper, Martin Lewis, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Grant Wood also sold particularly well.

George Bellows, A Stag at Sharkey’s, lithograph, 1917.

Among Old Master prints, Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer achieved the highest price of the day, selling for $132,000. Created the same year as Dürer’s St. Jerome in his Study and Knight, Death and the Devil, the print is considered one of Dürer’s master (or meisterstiche) engravings.